Review | Firefly Sculpey Fun Forms

Reported by Beth Silaika

One rainy day, my son Xavier and I decided to review the Dinosaur Firefly Sculpey Fun Forms kit. It was a perfect rainy day activity and he was quite enthusiastic to create his own Triceritops.

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The kit contains 8 pieces - the form, some clay and a few tools to detail your sculpture. The kit is for ages 8 and up. Xavier is turning 7 this weekend, so with supervision, I felt it was age appropriate.

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We started by reading the directions, which were pretty specific. You could create one of two types of dinosaurs: Stegosaurus or Triceratops. We chose the Triceratops. There were step by step directions on how to create each size of clay to form our dinosaur.

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Xavier could not wait to start forming his dinosaur, so I let him start by rolling out the clay in the forms into the shapes they specified. This was actually a great project for him to work on since he has fine motor delays.

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The clay can be sliced with the tool provided in the kit and then slowly rolled and softened to form the shapes.

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The directions are labeled with each pack of clay which must be formed into specific shapes. The directions are in black and white, and it would have been nice to have the photo on the directions in color, just to distinguish between the tan, brown, and clay colors.

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The roller tool in the kit allowed you to evenly flatten the pieces of clay into the shapes required to cover the plastic dinosaur form.

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We were not sure of the exact size of the shapes required, so we really had to guess based on the amount of clay. It would have been nice to have the directions specify the size of the specific shapes (e.g. make a 1/4 inch flattened circle).

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Xavier was able to easily press on the clay to the form, but I helped him press it and mold it tight so that the colors flowed together.

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With a little bit of help from the tools provided in the kit, we soon saw the Triceratops take shape!

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Some final pieces of clay on the bottom and we were just about finished and ready to bake our Triceratops (which we affectionately named "Brownie"....I talked him out of "Horny").

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The finished form was ready to bake in the oven. It was only a few minutes of baking time to completion.

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Here is the finished product. It doesn't look like the dinosaur on the cover of the box, but it is something that Xavier treasures!

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We both really enjoyed working with the Firefly™ Sculpey® Fun Forms™ Dinosaur kit. It was a nice change of pace from watching television or playing video games on a rainy day!

Pros:

  • wonderful variety of choices for a personalized toy for your child to make
  • great project for a rainy afternoon
  • realistic looking, durable final project
  • non-toxic

Cons:

  • directions were difficult to follow in black and white; color directions with specific sizes would be better
  • messy - colors of clay can bleed and you need to wash your working surface and hands between colors to avoid colors mixing
  • clay is very hard, but if you set it under a light for a few minutes and work it with your hands and condition it, it becomes softer.

Have you tried the Firefly Sculpey Fun Forms yet? What do you think?

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